The OU Council held a potential quickban vote on Friday, its first one after the conclusion of the Terastallization suspect earlier this week.
Here are the results:
For something to be quickbanned at this stage of the metagame, we require a supermajority of over 2/3 votes. With our current 9 members, at least 7 out of 9 votes need to be ban votes. We believe this process leads to only the most definitively ban-worthy presences of the metagame being removed, but please message Finchinator or Ruft if you have any further questions on the process. Worth noting that it's possible we reevaluate some of these Pokemon upon the release of Pokemon Home later this year. Since Chi-Yu, Annihilape, and Cyclizar all met that 7/9 threshold, they are now banned from SV OU, effective immediately (tagging Marty and Kris to implement).
Chi-Yu
In what should be the least surprising tiering decision of SV so far, Chi-Yu joins Flutter Mane, Houndstone and Palafin in receiving a unanimous ban vote. Despite being initially overshadowed by Chien-Pao in the havoc of the early metagame, Chi-Yu has emerged as the most centralizing piece of current SV OU. An excellent 135 SpA with an overall decent statline ends up too much to handle when taking its Ruin ability into account. Beads of Ruin multiplies the opponent's Special Defense (not base stat, but the number itself) by 0.75 before going into damage calculation, which results in a blanket boost of 1.33 (or 1 + 1/3) to all of Chi-Yu's Special moves. Chi-Yu's very potent offensive typing of Dark/Fire coupled with this overwhelming power and very potent Terastallization options makes it an absolute nightmare for teams to handle defensively.
Terastallizing to Fire exacerbates its power even further, to the point that Specs Overheat from Chi-Yu can 2HKO a non-SpDef Blissey from full HP. Chi-Yu can also use other Tera types, such as Fairy to snipe Roaring Moon and the chance Tyranitar as well as safely 2HKO Ting-Lu. A movepool that's just small but more than good enough when including Terastallization and Tera Blast into account alongside Choice Specs to make the most of its absurd power, Heavy-Duty Boots + Nasty Plot sets to become a more reliable threat and the occassional Choice Scarf to destroy more offensive teams, Chi-Yu proved a surprisingly versatile threat that is consistently nigh impossible to play against on equal terms.
Annihilape
Annihilape escaped most people's sights before the tier was formally released and during the chaos of the first few days, but it quickly emerged as one of the most important threats of the metagame. Rage Fist is a hellish move to face off against, as it forces Pokemon to withhold damaging Annihilape if they don't do significant enough damage to either OHKO or put it out of commission for the rest of the game. Against the common Bulk Up / Rage Fist / Drain Punch / Taunt (or sometimes Rest) set, using weak moves against it can not only make little progress on your end but directly enable Annihilape itself to become a bigger threat. With very servicable natural bulk of 110/80/90 and decent offensive stats, once it gets Bulk Up boost or two while shutting down status moves through Taunt it becomes surprisingly tough to take down and incredibly strong at the same time. Passive sources of damage such as Rocky Helmet or Gargarnacl's Salt Cure (the latter especially against a Water Tera Annihilape) can be very effective against it, but are highly specific and not particularly difficult to overcome anwyay. Annihilape also has access to Stealth Rock and Final Gambit and can be used as a potent and highly forceful hazard lead for more offensive teams, giving it another useful niche albeit not a particularly broken one.
Despite its typing being one of the best possible offensively, hitting every Pokemon at least neutrally, it can be fairly lackluster defensive. This is where Terastallization comes in - Annihilape is one of the best abusers of Terastallization in OU. Most commonly Terastallizing to Water, but feasibly being able to become other types such as Steel, Fire, Normal and more, the ability to change checks and potential stops while changing into a harder to OHKO type on a whim is particularly powerful on a Pokemon as punishing as Annihilape. Reducing the amount of non-lethal damage Annihilape takes or making extremely powerful moves such as Chi-Yu's Overheat no longer lethal makes Rage Fist stronger and lets Annihilape stick around and potentially recover anyway through Leftovers and Drain Punch. This is a very common way Annihilape spirals out of control against teams that don't overprepare for it, and sometimes even those can be very much overwhelmed.
Cyclizar
The premier user of Shed Tail is finally getting its due after being voted on since the start of the generation. We have exclusively voted on Cyclizar and not Shed Tail, since the other user of Shed Tail (Orthworn) has not been as intense of a headache to play against as Cyclizar. What makes Cyclizar truly broken is its access to an exceptionally high amount of utility alongside Shed Tail. Rapid Spin, Knock Off, U-turn, Taunt, useful defensive typing, and most importantly Regenerator alongside okay-ish bulk and high Speed allow it access to decent progress-making outside of just using Shed Tail.
Of course, Shed Tail is still the only reason Cyclizar is even viable in OU. The way Shed Tail takes advantage of passive Pokemon or even simply resisted move guessing-games is second to none, providing not only a free entry to a Pokemon but potentially multiple free turns and so a 'wrong' turn with a passive Pokemon turns into a death sentence against Cyclizar + offensive threats. Cyclizar is even often ran in Hyper Offensive teams with Screens (usually through Grimmsnarl), making Shed Tail substitutes significantly harder to deal with even for non passive Pokemon.
Through this universally useful utility and Shed Tail's oppressive nature, Cyclizar's inability to make significant progress on its own is rendered a relatively insignificant downside and Cyclizar became a highly broken element of the current metagame.
Here are the results:
| Finchinator | Ruft | ausma | FlamingVictini | ima | Ox the Fox | Star | talah | TPP | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ban | Ban | Ban | Do not ban | Ban | Ban | Ban | Ban | Ban |
| Ban | Ban | Ban | Ban | Ban | Ban | Ban | Ban | Ban |
 | Do not ban | Do not ban | Do not ban | Do not ban | Do not ban | Do not ban | Do not ban | Do not ban | Do not ban |
| Ban | Ban | Ban | Do not ban | Do not ban | Ban | Ban | Ban | Ban |
 | Do not ban | Do not ban | Do not ban | Do not ban | Do not ban | Do not ban | Do not ban | Do not ban | Do not ban |
 | Do not ban | Do not ban | Ban | Ban | Ban | Do not ban | Do not ban | Do not ban | Ban |
 | Ban | Do not ban | Do not ban | Do not ban | Do not ban | Do not ban | Do not ban | Do not ban | Ban |
 | Do not ban | Do not ban | Do not ban | Do not ban | Do not ban | Do not ban | Do not ban | Do not ban | Do not ban |
For something to be quickbanned at this stage of the metagame, we require a supermajority of over 2/3 votes. With our current 9 members, at least 7 out of 9 votes need to be ban votes. We believe this process leads to only the most definitively ban-worthy presences of the metagame being removed, but please message Finchinator or Ruft if you have any further questions on the process. Worth noting that it's possible we reevaluate some of these Pokemon upon the release of Pokemon Home later this year. Since Chi-Yu, Annihilape, and Cyclizar all met that 7/9 threshold, they are now banned from SV OU, effective immediately (tagging Marty and Kris to implement).
Chi-Yu
Terastallizing to Fire exacerbates its power even further, to the point that Specs Overheat from Chi-Yu can 2HKO a non-SpDef Blissey from full HP. Chi-Yu can also use other Tera types, such as Fairy to snipe Roaring Moon and the chance Tyranitar as well as safely 2HKO Ting-Lu. A movepool that's just small but more than good enough when including Terastallization and Tera Blast into account alongside Choice Specs to make the most of its absurd power, Heavy-Duty Boots + Nasty Plot sets to become a more reliable threat and the occassional Choice Scarf to destroy more offensive teams, Chi-Yu proved a surprisingly versatile threat that is consistently nigh impossible to play against on equal terms.
Annihilape
Despite its typing being one of the best possible offensively, hitting every Pokemon at least neutrally, it can be fairly lackluster defensive. This is where Terastallization comes in - Annihilape is one of the best abusers of Terastallization in OU. Most commonly Terastallizing to Water, but feasibly being able to become other types such as Steel, Fire, Normal and more, the ability to change checks and potential stops while changing into a harder to OHKO type on a whim is particularly powerful on a Pokemon as punishing as Annihilape. Reducing the amount of non-lethal damage Annihilape takes or making extremely powerful moves such as Chi-Yu's Overheat no longer lethal makes Rage Fist stronger and lets Annihilape stick around and potentially recover anyway through Leftovers and Drain Punch. This is a very common way Annihilape spirals out of control against teams that don't overprepare for it, and sometimes even those can be very much overwhelmed.
Cyclizar The premier user of Shed Tail is finally getting its due after being voted on since the start of the generation. We have exclusively voted on Cyclizar and not Shed Tail, since the other user of Shed Tail (Orthworn) has not been as intense of a headache to play against as Cyclizar. What makes Cyclizar truly broken is its access to an exceptionally high amount of utility alongside Shed Tail. Rapid Spin, Knock Off, U-turn, Taunt, useful defensive typing, and most importantly Regenerator alongside okay-ish bulk and high Speed allow it access to decent progress-making outside of just using Shed Tail.
Of course, Shed Tail is still the only reason Cyclizar is even viable in OU. The way Shed Tail takes advantage of passive Pokemon or even simply resisted move guessing-games is second to none, providing not only a free entry to a Pokemon but potentially multiple free turns and so a 'wrong' turn with a passive Pokemon turns into a death sentence against Cyclizar + offensive threats. Cyclizar is even often ran in Hyper Offensive teams with Screens (usually through Grimmsnarl), making Shed Tail substitutes significantly harder to deal with even for non passive Pokemon.
Through this universally useful utility and Shed Tail's oppressive nature, Cyclizar's inability to make significant progress on its own is rendered a relatively insignificant downside and Cyclizar became a highly broken element of the current metagame.